Permission eMail Marketing Tips for Offline Small Business Owners

Unless your small business is situated under a rock, you've probably heard something about email marketing by now, and you may have even wondered if it's time for your small business to get into it.

In its simplest terms, email marketing means communicating with consumers through email. But there's a big difference between trying to talk to consumers who never asked to be talked to in the first place, and talking to your own customers, who at some point have said, "Yes, I'd love to hear from you."

That's where permission email marketing comes in. Permission email marketing means giving valuable information to consumers who have requested to receive it. It is the ONLY legitimate way to send an email marketing campaign, and it is the only way your small business can benefit from email marketing.

But how do you get your customers to say "I do"?

If you have an online business, or if your offline business has a website that receives many visitors, compiling subscribers can be as easy as adding a subscription box to your website. You would offer users something valuable, like a periodical newsletter or emails with discount coupons and, in return, your users would subscribe to your mailing list.

Sounds great. But what if your business is primarily offline, and what if you don't even have a website?

Many businesses think that's reason enough to step out of email marketing altogether. But what they're missing here is that compiling a permission email marketing list offline can be as easy, if not easier in some instances, as building a list online.

We have advised many clients on tips to collect email addresses at the point of purchase. Here are some of our favorite tactics:

- Collect business cards, Offer a prize.

This is one of the oldest, most proven methods of collecting customer information in-store. Your prize doesn't even have to be huge. If you own a restaurant, it can be as simple as a free dinner for two. If you own a hair dresser, it can be as easy a 50% off coupon towards their next cut. The beauty here is that customers who submit their business cards have expressed genuine interest in your products or services. So when you contact them by email with further offers, you know you're talking to people who want to buy what you're selling.

The one thing to keep in mind here is that you MUST inform users that by submitting their business cards, they are agreeing to receive email communication from you. This can be as simple as adding a sign to the business card drop-off box saying: "We will send you an email to notify you if you have won. We may also send you periodical emails with special offers and announcements. If you do not wish to receive emails from us, please write 'No Email' on your business card."

- Start a V.I.P. Club

Many consumers like the idea of belonging to something exclusive, and receiving offers that are extended only to a select group of people. The labor on your part is minimal. It's as easy as keeping a notebook by the cashier. As a customer comes up to complete a purchase, casually tell them about your businesses' V.I.P. Club and ask them if they would like to join. Customers will appreciate this if you position it as a rewards club, or a way to say "Thank you, we love to have you around" to your most loyal customers. Of course, you should offer V.I.P. Club membership to any of your consumers, as you may find, once you start emailing them offers, that's a great way to build your most loyal customers. Make sure the offers you send them are, in fact, exclusive, and that you email V.I.P. Club members often enough, but not too often to become annoying (once or twice a month is usually a good interval).

Again, when you're collecting customer emails for the V.I.P. Club, make sure your customers know they're signing up to receive email offers from you.

These are just some ideas to get your permission email marketing subscriber list started. The best news here is that compiling a list is actually the toughest part of managing an email marketing campaign. As long as you're using an email marketing manager program that's specifically designed for small businesses like yours, the rest of the process is a breeze.

Creating a campaign involves little more than selecting a professionally-designed template, typing text and choosing a few good images. Your campaigns will be scheduled and sent automatically, so you'll never have to worry about being involved in that part.

What you will get to do (and this is probably the most exciting and most rewarding part of email marketing), is analyze your campaign after it's been sent. You'll be able to see how many people opened your email message, how many people clicked on each link within the message and, best of all, exactly who did what. Now that's what we call accurate, detailed, and immediate consumer research (you actually get to track your consumers' actions from the exact moment they happen). 


And while you would previously pay a fortune just to get this research data, today your small business can send professional email marketing campaigns and track detailed consumer behavior for less than it would cost you to print store flyers.

It's the new age of marketing, and there's never been a better time for your offline small business to get into the game.

Robert Burko is president and founder of Eliteweb.cc, an Internet portal and suite of Fortune 500 tools designed for the specific needs of small businesses. Eliteweb's direct email marketing program is perfect for online or offline small businesses. Click on the link above for a no-commitment 30-day free trial.

Top 5 Tips for Effective eMail Marketing

Over the past few years, research has continued to prove the benefits of e-mail marketing for business: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. But e-mail marketing is becoming much more than just a tool for spammers and e-businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail.

The best news is that the majority of people who receive permission-based e-mails open, on average, 78% of them.

Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. But crafting an effective business email is both an art and a science. Here is a list of factors, potential problems and effective solutions to keep in mind:

1. Spam! Spam! Spam! I don't need any Viagra!

The average consumer receives more than 300 emails a week, 62% of which are spam. No wonder there's such hostility towards the industry. But spam filters, bulk folders and "report spam" features are helping consumers become more at ease about the perils of spam. While 89% of users cited spam as a major concern in 2003, that number dropped to 85% in 2004, proportionally to an increase in the use of spam-fighting tools.

So as a permission-based business email marketer, what can you do? One tip is to remind your subscribers to add you to their "safe senders" list. The second, and most important, tactic is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with ISPs. This will ensure that your email marketing campaigns go into your subscribers' inboxes, not their junk mail folders. When choosing an email marketing software, make sure the company has strict anti-spam policies and complies with the guidelines of Can-Spam.

2. Images and formatting: Why do my emails look broken?

Broken email campaigns are an increasing concern among email marketers, especially since several companies and web-based email providers now block graphics as a measure to combat spam. In fact, according to ClickZ, 40% of email marketing messages delivered to inboxes are "broken."

This was actually something that came up during Eliteweb.cc's beta-testing phases, as we had a client in the Canadian Government whose recipients were mostly using highly secure email programs. The solution we came up has now become one of our key competitive advantages.

What Eliteweb.cc does is it publishes every single email marketing campaign sent to a secure location on the web (a location only original recipients of the email can access, thanks to encrypted technology that automatically authenticates the user). The technology also ensures you can track your users' behaviors, even if they are reading your email campaign at the secure web location.

3. Personalization and relevant content: In a business e-mail, one size does not fit all.

In a recent study by DoubleClick, email users were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified. That number points out the absolute importance of allowing users to choose their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive. The most popular interest categories, according to the study, are coupons and household goods.

But you're coupon is no good unless the user opens the email. Users in the study said the most compelling reason for them to open a business email is the name in the "from" field. So it's a good idea to make sure your company name is clearly stated there. Another major factor is the "subject" line. Users cite discount offers and interesting news as the most compelling subject lines, followed by new product announcements and free shipping offers.

4. Click-through and conversion: Show me the money!

So the user has opened your email and read the content. Great. But where's the sale? There's good news here. For one, consumers are increasingly likely to make purchases as a direct result of a business email campaign. One-third of users in the DoubleClick study had purchased something by clicking a link on an email. Another 42% clicked on an email link for more information, then purchased the product at a later time. Second, online couponing is booming: 73% of consumers have redeemed an online coupon for an online purchase, and 59% have redeemed an online coupon offline.

In terms of industries, the top performers are travel, hardware/software, electronics, apparel, food, home furnishings, gifts/flowers and sporting goods. All companies sending business emails in those categories said between 71% and 80% of recipients have purchased their products because of an email campaign.

There's no need to fret if your company doesn't fit in to one of those industries. The overall landscape for email marketing conversions is looking brighter every day. The average click-to-purchase rate has increased nearly 30% since 2004 and the average orders-per-email-delivered rate has increased more than 18% since last year.

5. Stats tracking: Who are my real consumers?

E-mail marketing is an increasingly popular tool in effective CRM, and it's about time more businesses recognize that. First off, if your provider's email services for business do not include detailed, real-time tracking, you're getting a raw deal. Real-time tracking is now an industry standard, and it's highly valuable, as it allows you to see the exact moment a user opens your campaign, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Studying your users can help you improve your communications efforts, so each campaign performs better than the last (several email service providers also let you compare the performance of your campaigns).

But many marketers are still in the dark. According to a recent WebTrends research, only 5% of marketers are very confident in the measurement of their online marketing efforts, while 26% admit they're "flying blind." WebTrends says the low confidence comes from a lack of knowledge when it comes to measurement, which means there's still a lot of work to be done.

In email marketing, a blind shot won't take you very far. But if you aim properly by following these essential rules of play, you should soon be reaping the same major results as so many online and offline businesses.

Robert Burko is the president and founder of Eliteweb.cc, a web portal that provides Fortune 500 solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Eliteweb.cc's Elite Email Marketing program is optimized for all the above tips.

7 Steps for Improving Your Email Marketing

The success of your email marketing campaign is often based on a set of complex factors. However, a number of these issues can be proactively managed to ensure an optimized response. When developing your next email campaign, consider the following guidelines.

1. Your list. Certainly one of the most important aspects of any email marketing campaign, your list is directly correlated to your success. Are your names recent? Have they agreed to be marketed to? Have they shown an interest in products or services similar to your own? Make sure that you are using a house list (names you collected on your own) or have been purchases from a reputable broker.

2. Your subject line. Getting a user to open your message is paramount any email marketing campaign. The best way to determine the subject line that works best is to break your emails into three random yet equal groups. Measure the response to each email and use the highest producing one as your control. In follow up emails, try to beat the response rate of your control email.

3. Your sender information. What information appears on the sender line of your email? Will your prospects recognize it? Do they want to hear from you? Often times, emails are deleted without ever being opened due to an indiscernible sender name. Your sender name should be brief and easily understood.

4. Track your results. Tracking allows you to determine who opened your message and clicked on a link or multiple links within your email. By determining what worked and what didn't, you can replicate success on your next email. As described above, tracking is particularly important when testing subject lines, imbedded links, and other direct response vehicles.

5. Make sure your unsubscribe method is in place and working. The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 requires that all email messages contain clear directions on how to opt-out from subsequent mailings. Provide an unsubscribe mechanism that allows those receiving your email to send you and email and indicate their desire to opt-out from receiving further emails from you or your business. If recipients no longer want to hear from you, it's in your best interest to remove them from your list.

6. Your images are correctly referenced and you've used alt tags in each image. Improperly referencing your images can cause them to appear broken when you send your message - the dreaded red x. To insure the image is referenced correctly it must appear as, img src="http://www.yourdomain.com...." rather than, img src="/images/picture.jpg". Alt tags are another important part of your images. The new security features on almost every email client these days disables images automatically. Having alt tags in place allow your reader to identify the image and determine if it is safe to enable.

7. Test, Test, Test! No matter what your involvement with email marketing happens to be, it is essential that you follow the guidelines above for successful results. In addition, the key is to test, test, test! After each email campaign, measure your opens, click-throughs, and purchases. Document the specific date, time, list, subject line, and content used to produce your results. Refer back to your documentation prior to your next campaign.

Email doesn't have to be a complex form of marketing. There are many best practices you can follow and some simple rules that ensure effectively delivery, open and conversion. By following the simple rules presented in this article, you'll not only deliver and effective email campaign, you'll discover a consistent method for generation revenue for your business.

* Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com, the Internet’s biggest source of marketing information and free marketing resources. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. 

Email Marketing - Developing an Effective Program

If someone tells you that email marketing is dead, don’t believe them. Email is still one of the most productive marketing tools you can use to sell your products and services. Email in extremely valuable for developing a one-on-one relationships with existing customers, delivering valuable content, and up-selling your services.

Those who don’t believe in the efficacy of email are not using the email medium effectively. Chances are these are the same individuals who send out mass emails without segmentation or an understanding of the purchase decision process.

Here are a number of key factors to keep in mind when engaging in email marketing.

1. Build your own email list. Emails that receive the highest open and click-through rates are house-lists. Simply stated, a house list is a database of email addresses that you’ve collected from individuals exchanging information with you on your website.

The easiest and most efficient way to build your house list is to offer an email sign-up (for a newsletter, promotion, or access to valuable information) on every page of your website. The more individuals who opt-in, the greater your database and chance for building profitable customer relationships.

2. Be relevant. This may seem obvious, but if you’re sending the same email to everyone on you email list, you may have fallen into this trap. Relevancy is more than delivering a message that recipients find valuable, it’s also timing your message according to a recent action, event, or behavior.

For example, if someone has recently singed up for a newsletter, engage them immediately. Even if you next newsletter doesn’t come out for another month, provide them with the existing month’s newsletter or access to your newsletter archive. If someone is taking the time to raise their hand and opt-in for your information, which is clearly relevant to their wants, don’t make them wait.

3. Provide something of value. If you’re not providing something of value, you’ll quickly find your database of email subscribers dwindling. Users will only open your email if you provide valuable information, tools, resources, or content that they find useful. When developing your email program, be sure to think it through and solicit feedback from your audience to continually enhance value.

4. Don’t ignore CAN-SPAM. Be sure to post your privacy policy. If you don’t have one, use a sampleclick here and customize it with your site’s information. Additionally, be sure to list your company’s address at the bottom of your emails and provide a way for users to opt-out. When a recipient chooses to opt-out, make sure you remove their name within 10 days of the request.

5. Develop an opt-out page. It still amazes me that many marketers are still using a generic opt-out. Smart marketers are using an opt-out page with between 8 and 12 opt out options. For example, is the user opting out of “important updates regarding their account”? Or maybe just the monthly newsletter? The key is to offer options so that users get the information that’s important to them and you retain the right to contact them.

6. Effective email takes focus. In the past decade, I’ve seen my share of effective email as well as email that costs more to deliver than return. The most effective email comes in the form of a well thought through campaign, utilization of email best practices (like having an accurate from line, subject line, designing for the preview pane, having a link for those who can’t read your html, CAN-SPAM compliance, and so on), and technology to deliver emails in a disciplined and organized fashion.

If you are sending emails whenever you feel like it or without a specific purpose, then you’re not getting the most out of your email program. You should think of email as a medium that requires daily management. Messages should be relevant, consistent, and provide value to the recipient.

Delivering effective email campaigns can be learned. The one thing to keep in mind is that if you want to get results from your email, than work through the consumers purchase decision process (by product, by segment). If your email program can move individuals through this process in an effective way, email will be more than electronic messaging – it will become a revenue driver!

*Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert and the President of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. 

Gateway Pages for Opt-In Email

Gateway

You're walking down the street. You see a shop. You see 'Giftshop' over the door, so you decide to go in and take a look around.

You're walking down the street. You see an interesting statuette in a shop window. You stop. Looking at other things in the window display, one or two other items catch your eye. You decide to go in and take a look around. Maybe there will be a similar statuette in your price range?

Which of the two scenarios above sounds most likely to you? The second obviously. Yet how often do you come across sites on the internet that don't have anything in the 'shop window' (the 'above the fold' space on the first page of the site), but rely on pure curiosity to get the customer past the first page?

Here's another scenario - What if the gift shop in question could know that the only customers to pass it's window in the next week will be women aged 30-45 with children? Or that only people interested in art would walk down the street? Any sensible gift shop would change it's window display to take advantage of the knowledge it has of the people who will look in it's window!

OK, so how does all of this apply to the Internet?

Well, consider this. Many companies spend a great deal of time and money creating gateway pages that are 'search engine friendly', aimed at getting their web site at the top of the search engine results when someone searches for key words relevant to that companies product or service. These gateway pages work well, as they bring in targeted customers that are searching for the particular product or service that is available on those pages.

Opt-in email generally works differently. You target potential customers rather than people actively seeking your product. So when these 'potential customers' get to your site, they are not necessarily looking right now for whatever you are offering. Therefore you need to find a way to catch their interest quickly.

Back to the shop window analogy. If you know the type of customer looking at your shop window, you should present it to suit that customer. With opt-in email you choose the type of customer that will be looking at your 'shop window' - so why not use a gateway page specifically designed to suit that type of customer?

The common gateway page is 'search engine friendly'. To make the most of your opt-in email campaigns you need a gateway page that is 'customer friendly'.

If you sell a range of products, then have a gateway page that highlights great offers on one or two products most likely to be attractive to your target list. Also, since you know who your audience is TALK TO THAT AUDIENCE ONLY. If you are targeting parents, you can safely talk about the joys of parenthood, with no fear of alienating any part of your audience.

So there you are. Use the fact that you can choose your target audience with opt-in email. Create a 'customer friendly' gateway page, aimed at the chosen target audience only. Then see a huge increase in the results you can obtain from your opt-in campaign.

Dave Broadway is Director of Marketing for HTMail Limited. HTMail offers permission based email marketing with customer feedback and email marketing articles at http://www.htmail.com Copyright (c) HTMail Ltd 2000-2006 http://www.htmail.com all rights reserved. You may freely distribute or publish this article provided you publish the whole article and include this copyright notice and links in full.

Why Surveying Matters

What is the single most important thing you can do as a business owner? That is a question that this week I think I have found an answer to. The answer? Keep your ear to the marketplace by listening to your customers.

Henry Ford’s Mistake

In the early 1920’s Henry Ford launched his assembly-line produced Model T. The car was relatively inexpensive, yet of good quality for the time. In order to reach production goals, the company decided to offer only one color of the car—black. "You could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black", the saying went. With this strategy, Ford quickly dominated the market, capturing up to 57% of the car market at its height. It was a brilliant initial strategy, but Ford eventually faltered. He simply forgot to listen to his customers that were asking for additional color options. General Motors saw this trend, and capitalized on it, producing cars in a multitude of color options and quickly taking back much of the Ford market share gains. With all the innovative ideas, industry-changing processes, and brilliant strategies Ford came up with, he forgot the most basic principle—the business owner rarely knows better than his or her customers.

Surveying Your Clients

There are a few ways to listen to your clients. Most business owners, at least in the early stages, maintain contact with and speak with at least a few clients each week. This is a good start, but I have found that it is not enough to speak with only our large clients—as these clients often have very different requirements that an average user.

The best way that I have found to be able to get feedback from our full client base is by sending a survey. Surveys can be sent either by mail or via the web. I would recommend sending web-based surveys over printed surveys as it is much less expensive and provides a higher response rate and a quicker return of information. Within iContact, the email marketing software my company Broadwick has developed, there is an included web-based surveying tool called IntelliSurvey that allows anyone to easily create, send, and receive results from web-based surveys.

In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:

• What do you like about our product or service?
• How do you use our product or service?
• How can we improve our product or service?
• Is there anything we can do to improve your satisfaction with our product or service?
• Are there any other services or products we could offer that you might be interested in?

Generally I would recommend leaving these types questions open ended. You can also ask non open ended questions such as "On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our customer service?" or "Which of these five features add-ons would benefit you most?"

Once you have deployed your survey, the next step is to wait for the responses to come in. While this may vary by industry, I’ve found about 90% of the total responses will come in during the first 72 hours after deployment of a web-based survey. With iContact, you can always review and export the results to Excel at any time whether you want to review the initial responses after an hour or download the final results after a week. I’ve seen response rates for web-based surveys range from 5% to 50% depending on the number of questions, the type of list, and how well your customers know you. When we survey our iContact client-base we generally receive about a 10-15% response rate. Our last survey, sent out on July 22, 2005 had five questions and received 295 responses out of a total 2350 clients who received the survey.

Reviewing the Results

Once you have the results, the next and very important step is to review them. If you have more than a few dozen responses, I would recommend creating a Feedback Summary Document that categorizes each reported method for improvement and tabulates the number of times a similar request comes up. At the end of this process, you’ll be able to get a very good idea of why your clients like your product or service and what they feel can be done to improve it, probably the two most important pieces of information you can have as a business owner. With this information you can create an improved roadmap for your product that will allow you to stay competitive and provide the product that your customers want.

In addition to being able to create this improved roadmap, you’ll also likely have a number of very good testimonials or case study material that you can use from the answers to the "what do you like" and "how do you use it" questions. As an example, my company Broadwick has collected and published a number of case studies and customer testimonials that have come from past client surveys athttp://www.intellicontact.com/casestudies/

Implementing the Changes

Once you have a good idea of what the most requested improvements are, you can consider how and when to implement these changes. Depending on your production or development cycle, it may take days or months to make some of the requested changes. Know that not all clients will want the same things. Some may even want changes or new features that conflict—causing you to have to consider offering multiple product lines or completing custom work.

When you have made some or all of the requested improvements be sure to get additional feedback from your clients prior to launching your new version or improved offering. One of the larger mistakes that I’ve made to date in my still young business career is not getting sufficient client feedback prior to launching a new version of my email marketing product to the full user base a few months ago. If we had allowed access to a few clients to review the new version prior to launch—we likely could have averted a number of the bugs and headaches that occurred after the launch. We since have changed our development process so that this type of beta client review is possible. In your organization, depending on what type of product you are selling certainly consider showing an early version of your new offering to some clients or holding a focus group session to get the very valuable post-change feedback prior to launch. Giving your client, and prospects for that matter, a role in the development of your product will help them feel valued and also be more likely to want to purchase your new product after launch.

Here is a review of the seven step feedback process I’ve discussed:

1. Ask the questions in a web-based survey
2. Create a feedback summary document from the results
3. Implement the changes
4. Get client feedback on the changes
5. Make final modifications
6. Go live with the changed product or service
7. Wait a few months and then restart the process

Listen to your customers and you’ll get the feedback you need to make customer-centric business decisions that will allow you to increase your client satisfaction, lifetime value, and retention rate.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a few best practice guidelines for sending out a web-based survey to your client base.

• Survey your clients at least every year, preferably every 6 months
• If your organization offers multiple products or services, create separate surveys for the customers of each major type of product or service you offer.
• Be sure to include questions asking both what your clients like about your product or service as well as any suggestions they have for improving it.
• Use a web-based survey tool such as IntelliSurvey (included in all iContact accounts) to increase response rates, make collecting and reviewing data easy, and save on postage.

Sending Your Own Web-Based Survey

If you are a current user of iContact, all you need to do to get started with your survey is log in and click the Survey tab. If you are not yet an iContact client or trial user, you can test out our survey feature for free by signing for a fifteen day free trial at http://www.icontact.com/trial.

Ryan P. M. Allis is the CEO for iContact, Corp. iContact offers the leading permission based email marketing software. (c) iContact, Corp. 2000-2009 http://www.icontact.com All Rights Reserved. You may freely distribute or publish this article provided you publish the whole article and include this copyright notice and links in full.

Why Email Marketing Matters

According to a study by the Winterberry Group, email marketing brings in $15.50 per dollar spent . This is about 17% more than direct-mail campaigns and 73% more than telemarketing campaigns. In short, email marketing matters and if you’re not sending out at least monthly email newsletters to your subscriber base, you should be. The true cost comes from acquiring the prospects and clients, not the three or four hours needed to create a monthly newsletter.

Many organizations, once they have spent the thousands of dollars acquiring their clients, fail to market to their existing base. I’ve met quite a few marketing managers who would rather continue spending $200 a pop for new qualified prospects rather than $0.01 per person to build the relationship with their existing clients and recommend new products or encourage re-orders. I’ve found that sending relevant email communications to persons who have requested to receive them is the single most effective way of cultivating the type of relationship needed to turn your prospects into customers and your customers into lifetime product evangelizers.

As a reader of this article, chance has it that your organization is one that already sends out a newsletter, or at least is considering doing so soon. Once you began sending your own newsletter, however, it is important to follow two important rules that will increase your likelihood of achieving your marketing goals, whether they are to increase repeat orders, convert a higher ratio of prospects, or obtain top-of-mind brand awareness.

The first and most important rule is to only send relevant content to persons who have requested it. What does this mean? Well, let’s say you are a travel and adventure planning company. If someone has subscribed to your Kayaking Monthly Newsletter, don’t move them over to your European Vacations list and send them an article on Dining in Tuscany. In most cases, you will very quickly lose any prospect or reduce the lifetime value of your relationship with an existing client. If the person also subscribed to it, it would be okay to send him or her a monthly company newsletter that from time to time had information on other topics, but don’t mix newsletter bases just to increase mailing volumes.

It is important to note that just setting up an interest segment and adding it to your sign up form doesn’t require you to create a monthly newsletter on that topic, but once you get a few dozen to a couple hundred people interested in that area (depending the value of the product or service you are providing), it will likely pay to have quality content developed on that topic for distribution in interest specific newsletters. This can be easily done within the iContact email marketing software by either creating a list specifically for persons interested in a topic or creating a segment of persons with a specific interest.

The second rule is to be consistent with your sending frequency. Depending on your type of business and your subscriber interest level, the right volume for you could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Once you find the frequency that is right for your organization (and this could vary newsletter to newsletter), stick with it. We see a lot of companies whose email strategy can only be defined as "ad hoc." Rather than blasting out a promotion whenever sales are lagging, we recommend having an emailing schedule for each newsletter and sticking to it, whether it be every Saturday, every other Wednesday, or on the 15 th of each month. As an example our company newsletter, the Permission-Based Email Marketing Monthly goes out on the 28 th of each month.

What type of results can you expect from regularly sending out regular email newsletters? Here are two examples from users of iContact the email marketing software my company Broadwick provides. Biotage is a company based on Massachusetts that provides DNA sequencing instrumentation. They send out event notifications and company updates to 20,000 or so subscribers each month. David Shultis, Marketing Communications Manager of Biotage, notes, "We've seen open rates at around the 38-42% mark for our large mailings. There has also been a 'pass-along' quality of our emails, as we've noticed new names that were not originally on our mailing lists responding to offers." Another iContact user, Julie Ibrahim, Vice President of the Tiger Sports Shop says "The monthly newsletter keeps us and our inn at the forefront in the minds of our past and potential guests. Thus with the continuous news from us and our region, we are kept in mind, with no sales effort or pressure." If your organization wants to see marketing results like these, it may be time to start or expand your usage of permission-based email marketing.

If you stick with sending relevant, high quality content-rich emails on a consistent basis to persons who have requested to receive your emails, you will increase your prospect to customer conversion rates and customer lifetime value at a fraction of the of the cost of traditional methods and take advantage of the best type of marketing possible—free marketing through authentic customer word-of-month.

Ryan P. M. Allis is the CEO for Broadwick, Corp. Broadwick offers the leading permission based email marketing software, iContact. We Simplify Email Marketing. (c) Broadwick, Corp. 2000-2006 http://www.broadwick.com All Rights Reserved. You may freely distribute or publish this article provided you publish the whole article and include this copyright notice and links in full.